I was glancing through SR4 and, well, I haven't been able to find the old rule that you can't read things from astral space. Granted, it's tempered with not being able to move through the earth, but what do people think about this change? Frankly, it scares the bejeezus out of me. Mages have become the ultimate cheap spy. Stick his head through any old file cabinet and he can read the papers on top (or summon his watcher in to flick between pages). Read passwords and SIN numbers, memos and the like. Yegads!

Am I missing something?

Whether it's allowed or not in Street Magic I am probably going to hold to the old interpretation that you can not read any non-enchanted written character from Astral Space. If the medium is handwritten and personal you can assense it and get the general emotional content of the writing. Printed or electronic communications are not readable from Astral Space ever.

unless of course someone takes the time to write out something in active foci, or something like that =D

Hmmm. Or maybe some sort of alchemical radical used as an ink...or the blood of a dual-presence critter. You could find a way to justify it if you tried hard enough.

blood of a dual natured creature would only work if it was still alive.

so then, if someone were to hook up a dual naturead creature to a pump and pass their blood through a series of tubes shaped like writing, someone could read that from the astral =D

Actually if you cast an illusion of letters on to a sheet of paper and quickened it, that probably could be read in the astral.

Agreed that it's not crystal clear if you can read while on the Astral or not. A manifested spirit/character could, of course, read something in the real world. Relevant passages which I'm sure you've already read are below.

SR4 page 181...

"Things that exist only on the physical plane can be seen and heard from the astral, albeit with blurred features and indistinct sound—emotional content registers far more strongly than exact details."

SR4 page 184...

"Manifesting characters and spirits appear on the physical plane as ghostly, hazy images and may freely communicate with physical characters."

If it was meant to be read on the Astral, why not? It'd probably ave to be hand-written, but why not?

Other stuff, definately not.

Actually, you could make out the form of the tubes, regardless of whether there was dual-natured blood in them.

Anyway, I don't think you can see colors from the astral plane, so you can't read printed text. As far as I'm concerned, you can only assense emotion that has "rubbed off" on the paper, and not the emotional content of the message.

My big question is whether you can make out letters in energy give off by a display screen.

Disclaimer: This post is actually born of genuine curiosity. It is not intended to be sarcastic, snide, snarky, inflaming, or incensing at all. I am not implying that one option is "right" over the others, I'm just curious to know.

That said:

Which ones of you are ignoring pre-established canon on this intentionally?

Which of you genuinely don't know? (either because you've just never had it come up, or because you came to SR after the release of 4)

Which of you are aware of pre-established canon but choose to ignore it and treat the new edition of the rules as "pure" and "all that exists" (for lack of a better way of describing it at the moment)?

You're right, my apologies. Here you go:

The bit that explicitly states that you cannot read text or print from the astral.

SR3, page 173 under "Astral Senses"

Thanks, eidolon. In general, though, I think that most of the ideas floated here (all of them in jest, I'm guessing) don't really violate the premise that non-living objects in the material world have little viewable detail in the Astral. They've focussed on loopholes - living matter, or items with an astral presence.

For example...can an Astrally projecting character observing a material character see their gestures clearly enough to understand them if they've using sign language? What about four mundanes in workmen's clothes using their bodies to spell out the name of a local youth club? It's all in fun, at this point. I hope...

Nim, shapes on the physical plane are easily visible from astral space, whether they are living or nonliving. Similarly, sounds are audible. (And an astrally projecting mage can make himself seen and heard on the physical plane, if he so desires.) It's only surface markings that are/were indistinguishable, which makes/made print illegible.

I ask on the assumption that SR4 was made to be independent of previous versions and self-contained. So I'm reading it with the understanding that none of the mechanics just carry over. I'm also reading with the understanding that new players won't have read SR3, and so won't be familiar with the older rules (and therefore will ask this question themselves eventually... we hope!)

Which of you genuinely don't know? (either because you've just never had it come up, or because you came to SR after the release of 4)

/rasies hand.

I'm made a street sam.
I'm just here to learn more about the game in general.

nezumi: Perfectly understandable. As I said, more curiosity than anything. I like "studying" gamers and gaming.

Personally, even if I were to start using SR4, I couldn't run it as if the earlier editions didn't exist. Also, I don't see this small bit as mechanical in any way. It's fluff that has an in game effect, as it were.

Anyway, I'm about to get in on a game of Pirates, so I'll look at this tomorrow. Thanks for the answers thus far, and apologies if it seems a hijack to some extent. I didn't think it worth starting a thread over. If you'd like, I can.

The not being able to read on the astral seemed like a neat philosophical idea that never really made much sense to me in actual practice.

Does the Hollywood Sign show up on the astral? (Not even sure if it still exists?)

Would a message spelled out in hedges be readable from above?

What about a message spelled out by carefully placed watcher spirits?

A fresh tattoo? Special cyberware implanted specifically to spell something out?

Can you not read memos and such because everyone is extremely near and farsighted on the astral for anything that doesn't have a full on living aura, but you could read print if it was large enough.

My 0.02 nuyen:

The fact that "emotional content registers far more strongly than exact details" implies that "exact details" can be picked up on--it's just not very easy to do so. Thus, -X- is probably right: if the writing is big enough and legible enough, the text should be decipherable.

Physical objects on the astral are hazy, colorless and indistinct. For bland, emotionless objects, their astral shadows can even have a tendency to blur together into the background. The more emotional, spiritual, or magical resonance an object possesses, the more distinct it is in the astral.

So, when you talk about the Hollywood sign, I'd say that's definitely clear in the astral; the Hollywood sign is an internationally-recognized monument that resonates with people to signify glamor and fame, among other things. What about an equally huge Ares logo on the side of an Ares arms factory? Probably not readable. It just doesn't carry much emotional, spiritual, or magical significance.

Likewise, reading your electricity bill likely isn't possible on the astral. Reading a love letter would be. Reading a letter written with an alchemic ink also would be. Reading a passage of religious scripture would also be possible. Reading a newspaper, no.

I once designed traffic lights for ghouls, being blind but possessing astral site they would need astraly active traffic lights. I was going to use different strains of FAB 2 that appear different enough to be traffic lights.


Edward

In my game:

[This post is outside the bounds of my curiosity, and delving into difference of interpretation. Therefore, consider it tangential, and not a part of, my earlier question.]

The Hollywood sign is not print or text. It is a three dimensional, physical object. Therefore, you can see it in it's full state, which means you could "read" it. However, if you'll think about how we "read" it normally, it's more iconic that textual.

Hedges are a physical object. You would be able to see and "read it". I highly doubt you'll find watcher spirits that look like Alphabits, but feel free to try.

You see physical objects on the astral, just the same as you would see physical objects on the physical. You see their astral overlay if they have one, but otherwise you see a physical object. I highly suggest anyone at all curious about this read the page I referenced earlier. Long story short, your "normal" senses of sight and hearing operate just fine on the astral plane, rendering questions like "Can you see the Hollywood sign" moot. "Regular" taste and smell don't function, however certain things encountered on the astral plan might be interpreted as tastes or smells; bitter taste in the mouth when you scan an angry letter as an example (mine, not from the book).

That is, of course, unless you're deliberately ignoring it in favor of your own interpretation. Which is fine, but seemingly silly, since by debating it here you indicate that you don't have an interpretation, which makes it seem that falling on what has come before is preferable to re-inventing the wheel. This has been an "if the shoe fits" statement. If you have an interpretation, the statement obviously doesn't apply to you.

It's pretty explicit and clear. You cannot read printed text (printed, written, etc, two dimensional text that exists as a differentiation made by darkening or lightening the same physical plane/surface by normal methods).

If you decide that you don't like the rule/fluff/whatever you want to call it, and therefore rule it differently, that's fine. But don't try to fuzz out some mumbo-jumbo semantic way of twisting the passage's language so as to support a position clearly and directly contrary to itself.

Here's what I believe about sensing emotional content from the astral plane:

Objects do not have emotional content. There can only be emotional imprints. People leave that behind. That's where background count comes from. If someone penned a love letter, his aura would give off emotion, which would imprint onto the paper. It would also imprint onto his pen, and his chair for that matter, though I would say that it's strongest on the paper, because he's directing his emotion towards it as he writes. In any case this imprint is a result of his feelings, not what the words say.

Here's a part that is a little more arguable. I believe this is proximity based. The emotion expressed doesn't go very far. this means that the Hollywood sign isn't able to be imprinted, except by those who climb up there. For another (poor) example, a cult of moon worshippers will not imprint the moon with their adoration, but the place where they gather will have a high background count. However, it's all relative. A cross above an altar is reasonably close enough to pick up an imprint from a congregation if its projected worshipping is strong enough.

I share this view, with some personal amendments.

IMO astral perception shouldn't be anything like sight or hearing or any of the other mundane senses. OK, maybe sometimes it can seem like that. Sure, why not? The bit of astral that you describe doesn't need to be anything like the bit of astral I describe, even if you and I are describing the same bit of astral space being 'observed' by two different individuals at the same time.

When somebody 'looks into astral' it's a prime opportunity for a GM to cut loose with the weird, the wonderful, and above all the abstract. If it's got strict rules like the 'real' world, then it... well... it starts to seem mundane. People start playing the numbers, and finding ways to power play. They start wanting to do things like: "I astrally perceive and work out all the cyberware that the deadly cybersam is carrying." "Well why not? I can see the outline of what's living and what's not, can't I?" No no no no. That's complete anathema to the way I want magic to be in my games. Magic is lawless, chaotic, capricious. Maybe on Tuesday you'll get a strong sense of what cyberware they're carrying, but on Wednesday you'll get an impression of a sawmill packed to bursting with buzzing blades and a tiny voice calling out 'help' from within.

Magic and astral perception should be scary, unpredictable, misunderstood, and at all times accompanied by the sound track to Donnie Darko.